Interview with Marc Heal of C-Tec - Fenix, Seattle, WA - 2/13/98

Jester: Tonight is the last date of the tour, how has
the tour gone for you?

Marc: It has been really good. I have really enjoyed
it and I think everyone else in the rest of the band has as well. This is
the first time that C-Tec has really ever toured and none of us knew what
to expect both from the band and from the audiences.

Jester: How much different is it from when you toured
with Cubanate last year?

Marc: The key difference for me personally is that Jean-Luc
is fronting the band this time around. Although I do backing vocals, most
of the time I am just twisting knobs on a keyboard which is quite different
from my role in Cubanate. It is very nice not to have the responsibility of
fronting the band. It has allowed me to be a bit more lazier on the tour.
I have actually had time to sit back and enjoy the tour.

Jester: What are your feelings now that the tour is
complete?

Marc: I think that I could handle a few more weeks on
the road. Back when we first started the tour, I really wasn't sure how the
live dates would proceed with two new live members of the band. The five
of us as a live unit had never played together before so it could have gone
catastrophically bad or in the case of this tour, phenomenally good. The
tour has gone so well that we want to come back to the US before the end of
1998 to tour again.

Jester: Why did you decide to shorten the name of the
band from The Cyber-Tec Project to C-tec? Was it to avoid confusion with
your old record label?

Marc: The main reason was that when the band was called
The Cyber-Tec Project, it was simply meant to be a one off project that
was released on the Cyber-Tec label in England. When I was brought into the
project, and we started to work on the album, we realized how much we all
enjoyed working together. We decided to make it into a more permanent band
and do away with the Project at the end because it was no longer a one off
collaboration. Since we were no longer involved with the Cyber-Tec label,
we dropped the Cyber in favor of just a 'C' to avoid any connection of
confusion. To be honest I never really liked the word Cyber anyway.

Jester: Were you an original member of C-Tec?

Marc: In the very beginning I was, however I was so busy
with Cubanate at the time that I didn't have time to work on the "Let Your
Body Die" EP. So for that EP, the line-up was Jean-Luc DeMeyer, Ged Denton,
and Jonathan Sharp. Jonathan left after the EP was recorded and because the
EP release coincided with a pause in Cubanate, I joined up again.

Jester: There is a drastic musical difference between
the EP and the new full length album "Darker". Is some of this change due
to your evolvement in the music writing process?

Marc: Yes. I don't want to dismiss the quality of the
EP, but I personally felt that it had a very generic sound to it. I wanted
to write something a little more challenging. Jean-Luc also wanted to
work with different styles and textures rather than churning out the same
old regurgitated music. Now that we have found a bit of confidence in our
musical experimentation, I expect the next album will be even more varied
and different. We will definitely continue exploring new areas of music
because we are all bored with current trend of electronic music.

Jester: How does the writing process work when you
compose new C-Tec material?

Marc: The general rule was that Ged and I would
piece together a rough idea of a song and take it to Jean-Luc. He would
offer suggestions and we would take it back into the studio and tweak it
a little. Then Jean-Luc would arrive in the studio work on the lyrical
ideas. Once we heard the vocals, we would often need to re-arrange some of
the music so they would better compliment each other. As a result, most of
the album was written in a very organic process in the studio, often taking
three to four days for each track before it reached its final version. In
the end everyone offered their suggestions for both music and lyrics rather
than strictly dividing the work between members as in other projects.

Jester: Why did you decide to write music to accompany
the Dorothy Parker poem 'Epitaph'?

Marc: It was all Jean-Luc's idea. He had been reading
a lot of Dorothy Parker's poetry and he felt that 'Epitaph' spoke to him
personally. He felt that he wanted to use that poem as lyrics for a song on
the album. So we went and received clearance from Dorothy Parker's estate
to use the poem.

Jester: Will there be a single released to accompany
the new album?

Marc: Yes. The will be a remix single released for
'Foetal'. There will also be a second single, but to be honest I cannot
recall which track it is. It might be for 'Nothing', but I cannot be sure.

Jester: How did C-Tec end up being signed to WaxTrax
Records?

Marc: It all happened via my WaxTrax deal with
Cubanate. For years Cubanate was signed to Noise Records in Germany. WaxTrax
has wanted to sign Cubanate for quite some time, but they wanted to wait
for the end of our record deal with Noise. As soon as the deal was complete,
Cubanate signed to WaxTrax at the end of 1997.

When I was visiting the US to work out the details, I played the rough
mix of the C-Tec album for the A&R guy and the label decided they wanted to
sign C-Tec as well. As a result, I have sold my soul to WaxTrax for the next
few years.

Jester: Will you be touring and promoting a new Cubanate
album soon?

Marc: Yes. The album will be released in early April. It
is tentatively titled "Interference". We hope to tour in support of the
album sometime after the release.

Jester: What kind of music can we expect from the new
Cubanate material?

Marc: The new Cubanate is a very radically different album
than our previous material. We have completely de-constructed ourselves and
changed the whole rhythm end. It is a very hard and experimental album. Right
now we have absolutely no idea how our fans will take to the album.

Personally speaking, I am really pleased with it, however I think there
are going to be people who hate it. We really try to change styles a little
on each album, but the new album is the most radical change we have ever
undergone. It is really difficult to describe the changes.

The music isn't so different that you would not be able to recognize
it as a Cubanate record, but we have totally changed the vocal and rhythm
arrangements in the music. We have taken out a lot of the guitars, but the few
guitars that remain are much heavier. The whole album is very sparse. There
is a great deal more empty space between all of the musical elements.

Jester: What does a live C-Tec show look like?

Marc: I play keyboards and sing backing vocals on a few
tracks, Jean-Luc DeMeyer performs all of the lead vocals, Ged Denton from
Crisis NTI is on keyboards, Dave Bianchi from Cubanate is playing guitar,
and Julian Beeston formally of Nitzer Ebb is on drums. We have a rather
extensive light show that we worked really hard on, but next time around I
expect us to get even more extravagant.

Jester: I heard rumors that C-Tec might perform several
new tracks that have not appeared on any albums yet. Is that true?

Marc: Yes. When we were writing the album, there were a
few songs which didn't make it onto the album, and we play a couple of those
on tour. A number of the tracks that you hear at the show later tonight will
sound quite different than what you hear on the album. However, we found when
we rehearsed some of the album tracks in the studio, they were not conducive
to being played live. We decided to substitute some of them for tracks that
we left off the album.

Jester: Will you be performing some of the slower tracks?

Marc: It really depends on how the crowd is responding
to the set. Most of the time we have played the slower tracks, but we won't
play them if the crowd doesn't seem like they will enjoy it. Personally,
I don't like performing a set full of fast energy songs. I actually like to
intersperse the set with slower material.

One of the deliberate things we have done with C-Tec, is to make the music
slightly more accessible. We have all become bored with the strutting and
the attitude that have become the staple of this kind of music. As a result
we have really tried to write some material that has a much more personal
and often emotional bent to it.

Jester: Will you be performing any material from side
projects tonight, or will it be a straight C-Tec set.

Marc: All of the material performed will be from C-
Tec. I understand that people might want us to play popular tracks from our
other projects, but we really want to try and disassociate C-Tec from the
rest of our other bands. I know that the tour was booked with the bylines
of Front 242, Cubanate, and Nitzer Ebb, but we are really trying hard to
create a sound and identity for C-Tec apart from the other projects.

Jester: Will the "Let Your Body Die" EP be re-issued
now that Fifth Column Records has folded?

Marc: I doubt it. Fifth Column Records are currently in the
middle of a huge financial mess. I certainly don't want to get involved with
all of the legal entanglements that would occur, should we try to re-obtain
out rights to that EP. I would rather just try an forget the whole mess and
move on with life.

Jester: What would you consider your favorite song(s)
from "Darker"? Why those song(s)

Marc: I really like 'Nothing' and 'Silent
Voices'. 'Nothing' really sounds better in a live situation and I really regret
not having added extra guitar to the album version. As for the other track,
I really like the fragile nature of the lyrics for that song alongside the
more violent nature of the musical background. I want to really give people a
bit more honesty in the music without compromising on toughness and I think
that song does it very well.

Jester: What does the future hold for C-Tec?

Marc: We have a European tour, which is currently being
booked at the moment. Front 242 and Cubanate will be touring the US this
summer. Then we want to record the second album in the Fall for release at
the beginning of 1999. Hopefully we can come back and tour here again around
that time.

Hopefully for the next tour, the album will have been released before we
begin the tour. The key problem with this tour was that it began the day after
"Darker" was released. As the tour went on, more and more people heard the
album and the shows began to fill-up, but during the first week of the tour
people hadn't even heard the album and the crowds were small. It is so much
nicer to play to an audience who had a chance to listen and digest the music.